This invention relates generally to environmental air filtration systems and more particularly to mechanical fan or blower mechanisms for drawing contaminated air through a collecting filter.
Although the invention finds particularly advantageous application in the field of soldering and desoldering operations and, in the cause of brevity and clarity most of the discussion below of examples and techniques of utilization relates thereto, the advantages for the invention in many other fields will be equally manifest wherever localized air contamination is a problem for the health or comfort of an operator or technician or where sensitive apparatus cannot tolerate certain environmental contaminates.
Practical approaches to this general problem in the prior art have included small electric fans and blowers which blow or draw air away from the working area or the contaminant source and disperse it into the more general environment. An improvement in this approach is to draw the contaminated air through a filter to collect particulate or precipitate materials from the fume laden air,
Although the former approach may be useful, or better than nothing, its limitations and disadvantages are readily apparent. The limitations of the latter approach are its fan noise required to be adequately effective and the quick saturation of the filter medium or the useful portions thereof. In this latter regard, it has been noted that a filter placed in front of a drawing fan does not collect the contaminant material evenly over its surface: rather, because of the complex air flow pattern through the fan impellers, a blotchy distribution of fume precipitate and particulate matter results in an effective utilization of only a small proportion of the filter area causing those portions to saturate and quickly become ineffective.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an air filtration, fume collection system which is not limited by these and other disadvantages of the prior art.
It is another object to provide such apparatus which fully utilizes the available area of the filter medium.
It is another object to provide such apparatus which is quiet in operation, simple and easy to use and maintain, and inexpensive in its manufacture and maintenance.
It is another object to provide such apparatus which may have a moistened filter medium and in which the "moisture" may odorize or deodorize its treated air.
It is another object to provide such apparatus which is integrated into a complete solder-desolder station to clear the breathing environment of the technician-operator.
It is another object to provide such apparatus which constitutes a general system to create separate, multiple areas of filtered air as in a laboratory or plant having a number of work stations.